Creating a Recipe Database

And these won’t get covered in ingredients

How to create a recipe database

For any professional chef or passionate spare time cooker, having an easy-to-use recipe database is an important aspect for each type of cooking and often acts as the “gps” for ingredients to reach their end destination as a finished dish. I’ve compiled a list of 3 efficient ways to manage and store your recipe database digitally so you can avoid your index cards or note books being filled with eggs or maple syrup.

1. Google Sheets

Google Sheets is a great way to organize a myriad of different databases and is used by chefs (and practically every professional organization) in some shape and form. One of the most daunting parts of working with Sheets is knowing how to get started. Luckily, this can generally be solved by having a strong template that you are able to build off and scale with. With Nifty you can also manage your google account directly from your Nifty projects, making it a seamless place to store, operate and build your recipe databases.

2. Google Docs / Nifty Docs

If you’re a passionate chef in your spare time and not working as one for your full time profession then Google docs or Nifty docs could be a great solution for you. Whitepapering via a google doc has been used by teams and people of all shapes and workflow methodologies to be productive and assist teams to work in an agile fashion. However, it can also be a great way to keep track of recipes and be used as a pretty solid database. Nifty docs allow you to make tables, embed images, and save your menus so you can keep track of meals that you already cooked so you can recreate a menu or experience with ease.

3. Airtable

Airtable is the OG tool for professional chefs looking to get organized everywhere. It is certainly the most mature and feature rich method of operating a recipe database, though it can be difficult to get started using Airtable for a task that seems so simple. Luckily the marketing team at Nifty put together some great starter kits that you can access in the Airtable community that have recipe database templates with active recipes ready so you can get started. This recipe database link is an excellent place to start. One of the main reasons why I prefer using Airtable over excel or google sheets is because of all the customizations and custom field options that Airtable makes so easy to use and get value out of. A favorite loved and used by many is the feature of being able to embed and work your Airtable spreadsheets directly through any Nifty project by using our Project View link embed, making it a breeze to operate your recipes, menus projects and workflows wherever you may be.

Final Thoughts

There are many different methods for creating and storing a recipe database. One can use Google Sheets, Google Docs / Nifty docs, or a multi level organizational Airtable solution. However one thing is certain — using Nifty as a central hub will lead to an easier and simplified process while creating a unified operation throughout whatever one may be working on.

My advice try Nifty for free today — and thank me later! 🚀